At an appearance at Columbia University tonight, Stephen Walt, a Harvard professor and former dean, said that he and University of Chicago professor John Mearsheimer were slated to speak at Google headquarters recently to discuss their bestselling book The Israel Lobby and at the last minute the event was cancelled mysteriously. "We were scheduled for Wednesday. Our publicist got an email on Friday afternoon," Walt said. The email didn’t say why the event was cancelled.
Walt says that at most of the venues the authors have spoken, the management has told them of the pressure they got to cancel the event. And often when they have appeared, it was with the understanding that someone from the other side would be presenting the opposite argument soon after, to balance their views. The two couldn’t appear "without someone following us…
"That’s not the way we’re supposed to do business in the United States," Walt said.
